


One More Breath

by bbjkrss



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hospitals, JohnlockChallenges Exchange, Lecroft, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 08:51:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbjkrss/pseuds/bbjkrss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my Valentine's Day gift for Lecroft on tumblr through the Johnlockchallenges' Valentine's exchange.</p>
<p>The prompt was "John is dying in hospital and Sherlock gets lost in imagining what they could have been." There is a happy ending. S3 spoilers, but a tiny bit of AUness present besides the obvious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Breath

            John hadn’t taken a breath in approximately eleven seconds.

            Sherlock’s thumb hovered tentatively over the call nurse button- thirteen seconds. He began to press down, heart pounding, but then John’s chest trembled and finally rose, a sharp gasping sound coming from the mask over his nose and mouth.

            Sherlock let out the breath he’d been holding and buried his face in his hands. The beep of the heart monitor was steady, he told the anxiety that began to rise almost immediately in his throat; he’d know if John was fading on him. There was no need to torture himself with the sight of John’s bloodless face or the angry red skin around the dressing on his chest. Still, the desire to _know_ soon became unbearable and he lifted bloodshot eyes to fix intently upon John’s face once more.

            It was smooth, at least, no lines to indicate he was in any sort of pain. Selfishly, though, Sherlock wished for some sign of discomfort; that would mean that John was still awake, still _here,_ able to open his eyes at any moment and yell at Sherlock for landing him in hospital _again._

            Because this was all Sherlock’s fault. He’d asked John to come along with him, told him to ignore Janine (if there had been another intruder he’d have needed John’s protection), led him into that room… Made him come face to face with his wife, holding a gun to Magnussen’s head.

            The oversight was unforgiveable. Sherlock had known, from the first deduction, that there was something odd about Mary. He’d been curious, intrigued, almost as much as he’d been towards John himself when they’d first met, but circumstances were different this time. Mary was not his, as John had potentially been. Mary was John’s, and John was no longer his—had never _been_ his, as Mycroft often chided him—so he’d let it go, bit his tongue all through the engagement and the wedding, been kind to her as she treated him the way only Watsons could, and tried his best not to ruin the happiness that was so evident in John’s every pore with his suspicions. For all he knew, the lie could have been a small one, one that couples normally told. It could have been about liking John’s mustache.

            _He eases the door open, prepared to use it as a shield just in case the intruder is still here (probable—no other doors, no one met them coming up—but not definite; escape through windows still a possibility). John is at his side, hand on the gun concealed at the waistband of his jeans. The sound of his hushed breath is comforting, but as Sherlock peers around the edge, he wishes that John were anywhere else but here._

            He’d gotten it wrong, so very wrong, and this time the consequences were more important than an argument over poisoned sugar. John was dying on a hospital bed, and he wasn’t even awake so that Sherlock could say goodbye.

            Quickly glancing over his shoulder to make sure that no nurses were about to come in the room, Sherlock leaned forward and pressed his lips to John’s forehead. He left them there for several seconds, memorizing the sensation, before he brought up a hand to cradle the back of John’s head and touched their foreheads together.

            “You’re not allowed to leave,” he whispered fiercely. “Do you hear me, John? Not yet, not before I’ve told you.”

            _“Sherlock? What is it?” John pushes him aside, opening the door further so that he can see. When he does, a choked noise escapes from his throat, and then Mary’s gun is trained on them. On her husband._

_“Mary… What are you- what are you doing?” John is bewildered, lost; Sherlock wants to take him in his arms, shield him, apologize for not seeing this sooner, for not acting on what he’d seen. He settles for raising his arms. Mary is holding a gun, after all._

_“I can’t let him keep manipulating me,” Mary says to John, nodding towards Magnussen who is still kneeling on the floor, hands on his head. “We’re going to have a family soon. I have to keep you safe.”_

            Sherlock’s hand tightened in John’s hair. He said nothing more for several seconds, then slowly moved his hand down to hold John’s on top of the blanket.

            “I promised to protect you,” he murmured, nosing past John’s temple until his lips were brushing against John’s ear as he spoke. “I promised to never let you down. I’m sorry to have failed you so soon. I-” He swallowed harshly and laid his thumb over John’s pulse point. “I have a confession to make. Several, in fact.”

            The only response was another shaky inhalation behind the mask. Sherlock closed his eyes and just listened to John breathe for several seconds before he continued.

            “I said the vows when you were getting married, John. Mouthed them along with you. I promised to honor you and care for you, for good or for ill. I’ve made more promises to you than I’ve made to anyone else, did you know? You deserve them all.”

            _“Keep me safe? You don’t have to kill a man to do that.” John’s face has lost the bewildered edge and is solidifying into his soldier expression, the one he uses when he’s trying to gain control of a situation. Sherlock is very familiar with it, and feels something constrict in his chest as he suddenly realizes exactly how this encounter will go. “Just put the gun down, and we can talk about this.” He takes a step forward, and Mary cocks the gun._

_“Don’t,” she orders. “I need to do this. If you don’t like it, you can leave, but I_ will _shoot you if you interfere.”_

            “It was purely symbolic,” Sherlock assured John, and slid his thumb a few times over the warm, dry skin of his wrist. John didn’t so much as twitch. “I understood that. You were never to know, I was never going to ask anything of you. You were happily married and I didn’t want to interfere. But I… I did keep a few pictures from the wedding, doctored them so that they were of you and I, not you and Mary. They were… helpful.”

            This was unbearable. Were John awake, he wouldn’t need to know about the hours Sherlock had spent carefully selecting photos from the online wedding album, choosing only the ones with their friends and family (adding them in where required, even Mycroft, because no matter what he said about sentiment he would never miss his little brother’s wedding), editing out and Mary and her guests where needed. He wouldn’t need to know how long Sherlock had labored over _their_ photo, the one of them outside the church after the exchanging of the rings; how many hours he had spent cutting and cropping and fixing the light and repositioning limbs so that it would look like John were truly embracing _Sherlock_ and not Mary. He wouldn’t need to know that Sherlock had created a separate room in his mind palace, an almost exact copy of the wedding and the days leading up to it; the stag night, now an early celebration of their promise to each other that ended with giggling and games instead of a cold night at Scotland Yard; the best man speech, now an ode to John by his new husband, and no murder to be found; the reception and the first dance, done to a recording of Sherlock’s violin, culminating in a kiss so warm and so full of love that Sherlock’s throat closed with the intensity of emotion with nowhere to go.

            Were John awake, he would need to know none of that. But John was dying, and so Sherlock would tell him everything.

            _“Mary, please.” John raises his hands in a placating gesture as he takes another step forward. “You can’t kill him. He’s a right bastard, I grant you, but that doesn’t mean you can just kill him like this. It isn’t right.”_

_Sherlock looks at Mary, studies her hard. If there is any weakness to her, any hesitance in her stance, they can use it to their advantage, but he’s not seeing any. Her face is blank, her arm is straight; it does not tremble at all._

_John is in danger._

_“One more step,” Mary says. “You take one more step, John Watson, and I will shoot you.”_

_“You probably ought to listen-” Sherlock starts to say, but John speaks over him, shaking his head._

_“No you won’t.”_

_He takes another step._

            Sherlock gritted his teeth, trying to resist the urge to pull John in close to him; he couldn’t risk jostling him and worsening his injury, but he needed to be closer, needed to touch John with every inch of his skin in order to expel some of the restless energy causing a cacophony in his brain. He pulled his chair as close to the side of John’s bed as he could and wrapped his right arm around John’s waist, right above where the blanket fell. His left he curled under his head, which he rested on the right side of John’s chest. He kept his eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to look at John’s wound; the arm over John’s diaphragm would do enough to reassure him that John was still alive.

            “The… fantasy of having married you sustained me once you had gone,” he admitted quietly. “Whenever I was feeling weak, whenever I felt the need to smoke, or go back to the drugs, I would look at the pictures. I would remind myself of the promises I made, and that you said you loved me.” He clenched his hands. “I never relapsed, John, not once before the case. It was _intolerable_ , watching you drift away from me, but I told myself it was all right because she _loved_ you.” He snorted, face scrunching up into a grimace. “Look at how wrong I was. The woman who helped you through my absence, the woman who’s now carrying your child- she doesn’t truly care about you. You were just a convenient way to solidify a cover story. I wouldn’t be surprised if she terminated the child, now that she’s run. Either that, or trained it up to become an assassin itself once it’s old enough.” He paused, then stroked John’s waist once, twice, softly. “A bit not good. I apologize.”

            John kept breathing, slowly and quietly. The heart monitor kept on beeping steadily in the background. The sound of traffic filtered in, muffled, from the window. On the other side of the door, doctors and nurses and patients trekked back and forth, their voices all but inaudible.

            “The doctors are surprised you’re still holding on,” Sherlock murmured into John’s stomach. “Tenacious, they called you.” He chuckled bitterly. “If only they knew everything you’ve been through.”

            _The gunshot rings out before John’s even finished shifting his weight. Sherlock bursts into action, leaping forwards and grabbing John around the middle, pulling him down to the floor with a loud thud. He can’t help but grimace—he hadn’t managed to protect John’s skull—but better a concussion than dead._

_That’s when he sees the blood._

            “You’ve suffered through war, and injury, and pain and loss… loss twice over, now.” Sherlock nuzzled a kiss into John’s chest and then kept his face there, pressed against John’s ribs. If he concentrated he could feel the vibrations of John’s heartbeat.

            “I trusted her. I gave her a chance, against my better judgment, and she took advantage. It’s my fault she’s killed you, and now you’ll never know how good it could have been, how much more I loved you than her. How much more I do love you.”

            The words tore themselves out of his throat, unbidden, yet once they’d escaped Sherlock couldn’t think of any other sound he wanted John to hear in his final moments. John’s breathing had grown shallow, hitching every few seconds, and Sherlock took his hand and spoke as fast as he could. John had to hear everything, _know_ everything, before he died.

            “I love you, John, and I would have proved it, every day if I could have. We would have had a se- a honeymoon. Just like the one you had with Mary, except everything would have been perfect because I would know everything you wanted and made sure you got it. We would have gone somewhere sunny—I know how much you love the beach—maybe an island somewhere, somewhere tropical enough that it wouldn’t remind you of Afghanistan. I would burn terribly, but that would be all right, because you would bronze, and be beautiful, and I would let you tease me and put sun cream on me, even if it was already too late to do any good.

            “And then, in the evenings, when everyone else had gone to sleep, we would sneak out again onto the beach. You’d show me the stars and I would memorize all of the constellations for you, and for each one I got right you’d give me a kiss, until we’d completely forgotten about stars and I was lying on top of you and-” Sherlock swallowed. “No, you would want to be on top, and I would let you. You would kiss me and touch me and we would have intercourse on the rocks as the waves broke around us until the tide came in and we had to move or else be carried off. But then you would suggest sex in the sea and even though I would still be so sensitive I would agree because anything for you, John, anything.”

            John’s breath had begun to even out again, but for how long this time? Sherlock kneaded his fingers against John’s hip and forced himself to keep going. “You would probably still want children. I would gladly go with you to adopt one, perhaps a girl with your coloring, so you could pretend it was the child you might have had with Mary. Or, if you wished to experience childbirth, I would help you select a surrogate with the genes and lifestyle most appropriate for your future child. You could choose its name. And as it grew up, I would teach it how to read and other important things, and you would teach it about the solar system and how to love… and hopefully it would thrive, even in the house of a sociopath.”

            Sherlock trailed off, then, throat suddenly tight. Therein lay the crux of the matter; he was a sociopath, and the man who’d exposed John’s wife as an assassin to boot. It was perfectly logical to assume that John would want nothing more to do with him in any context, romantic or otherwise. True, John’s good nature had safeguarded their friendship thus far, but it would do nothing to make Sherlock’s fantasies any less presumptuous. He’d assumed that telling John he was loved would be soothing, but perhaps he’d only been making him uncomfortable. He took in one last breath, savoring the warmth of John’s skin, and moved to sit up.

            “Keep going.”

            Sherlock froze. The voice had been weak, rusty, but definitely John’s. He lifted his gaze carefully to study John’s face; his eyes were still closed, but now his brow was furrowed in pain and there was tension present in his shoulders and arms that hadn’t been there before.

            “I-” How to play this? There was no way to tell how much John had heard, or what he had found least offensive. Sherlock carefully blanked out his expression and retreated until he was seated fully in his chair, the only point of contact between him and John their joined hands. “You’re awake.”

            “Yeah, but I wish I wasn’t.” John let out a soft, pained noise, pushing his head back against his pillows. “God, is there a dial for my meds? I need-”

            “Of course.” Sherlock turned it up several notches, watching John closely until the lines on his face were smoothed away by the drugs.

            “You can keep talking,” John said after a few minutes of silence. “Doesn’t even have to be what you were saying before, just…”

            “It wasn’t important,” Sherlock replied shortly. “Well, the imploring you not to die bit was, perhaps, but that’s what any good friend would do.”

            “Sherlock…” John cracked his eyes open and fixed him with a weak glare. “I’m not dying. I’ve actually been awake for a bit, now. Too tired to move, but I could still hear you talking about-”

            “Do you plan on moving back into the flat?” Sherlock asked desperately, all concerns about timing be damned, because he knew what John was going to say, and he couldn’t bear to hear it, not after laying himself out in the open like this. “Mrs. Hudson will be so pleased to see you again, and we’ve kept your room clean—well, by we I mean Mrs. Hudson, but it’s all the same in the end…” John couldn’t have been listening. He’d been busy _dying_ just a few minutes ago, hadn’t he? How could he be awake and talking and _know_ -

            “I dunno, probably.” John carefully shifted several times in an attempt to get comfortable before he spoke again. “Sherlock… about what you said-”

            “What you dreamt I said.”

            “Whatever.” John’s hand clenched around his. “Did you mean it?”

            Sherlock paused. _Redbeard. Not an advantage._ “What do you want to believe, John?”

            “The truth.” John was already exhausted—blinking rapidly, muscle strength failing—but he kept his eyes fixed on Sherlock’s, and tightened his fingers when Sherlock tried to look away. “If you want to take it back, pretend it never happened and chalk it up to _I can’t live without you_ , then fine, that’s fine, but…” He took a deep breath. “Don’t deny it just because you think that’s what I want to hear.”

            Sherlock couldn’t breathe. “John…”

            “I can’t promise you anything right now,” John said. “Sudden divorce and morphine don’t really make for clear heads, but really, it’s all fine, Sherlock.” He closed his eyes and relaxed back onto the pillows with a smile. “Now keep going. I want to hear how the story ends.”

            Sherlock sat there for a moment, brushing his thumb over the back of John’s hand. Just a few minutes ago he’d been preparing to spend the rest of his life without John Watson. Now… he tentatively lifted John’s hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss, feather-light, to his knuckles. John’s smile, if anything, grew wider, and Sherlock kissed them again, more firmly this time.

            “We’ll grow old together, John,” he whispered, and smoothed John’s hair back as his body relaxed once more towards sleep. “Out in a house in the country, with the occasional case and the sound of bees…”


End file.
